The 2012 Common Roll has been cleansed of duplicates and ghost names, says PNG Electoral Commissioner, Patilio Gamato.
This follows a vigorous cleansing exercise.
Speaking to political party executives in a workshop on Thursday, Gamato said a roll cleansing of the entire country has been completed.
“The exercise began around November-December last year and we began cleansing the 2012 roll.”
“And surprisingly enough, we found a lot of discrepancies on the roll so we went through by cleansing the roll with the assistance of the Australian Electoral Commission,” said Gamato.
The statement by Gamato is a bold one given PNG’s history of double voting and using of ghost names during Election Polling.
It was an issue which Gamato’s predecessor, Andrew Trawen, dealt with during three General Elections.
Gamao said currently EC officials are in the process of updating the ‘cleansed’ roll in certain parts of the country.
He said the process is expected to be concluded within the next four months and the information will be published for the general population to view and object too if there are still discrepancies.
“The objection period is 30 days, and after that, then we have the final roll prepared and printed and ready for the election next year.”
Gamato added the lessons learnt from the roll cleansing will give EC officials skills to pick up irregularities during the updating stage.